Chapter Text
Phillip's senses were slow to return to him with the rest of his body. The first thing he felt when he came to was the steady yet harsh increase and decrease of pressure in his chest, followed by the rapid thumping of his heart. He had no sense of touch, he couldn't hear or see anything. It was probably for the best at the moment. He could feel the pieces of his balloon form dissolving and flowing back to where his arms and legs should be, and he really did not need to see what he was still missing. I really messed this one up, he thought idly. Alex is never going to—
Oh crap, Alex!
Had he been caught in the explosion? Phillip had no idea how large the blast would have been; physics wasn’t exactly his forte like chemistry was, and he'd been too busy trying to contain it to try to guess. Please be okay please be okay please—
He was interrupted by the sound of his own panicked breaths as his ears were reformed. He cut his breath short and listened silently. He didn't hear any shouts of pain, which was either a good sign or a really, really bad one.
His eyes finally opened, showing him the small, dry crater he was lying in. He rolled over onto his stomach, weakly trying to push himself up onto his knees as he sluggishly tried to form a plan for whatever injuries Alex might have gotten. Phillip figured the worst of it might involve serious burns if he had been close enough. He didn't know how to treat burns; he couldn't recall much first-aid and had generally avoided medical staff like the plague back at the Institute. What about shrapnel, or a concussion? Could explosions cause concussions?
As if one victim hadn't been enough, Fai's voice emanated from somewhere behind him: “PHILLIP!”
Phillip inhaled sharply, sucking in a lungful of smoke that wasn't his own and crumpling into a fit of coughing as his mind similarly choked on a new wave of worst-case scenarios. When had Fai shown up? Had she been injured as well? How many of the others had he hurt with this screw-up?
[AN]Actually, we’re scrapping this scene for the sake of tonal consistency. Let’s take it from Phillip waking up again.[/AN]
